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Rights Group's Office In Moscow Attacked During Movie Screening


Polish film director Agnieszka Holland (file photo)
Polish film director Agnieszka Holland (file photo)

A group of attackers burst into the office of Russia’s Memorial human rights center in Moscow on October 14, interrupting the screening of a film about a Welsh journalist who reported the existence of the Stalin-era mass famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s.

The attackers entered the room where the movie was being screened and shouted slogans such as "Shame" and "Down with fascism," forcing the interruption of the screening.

Police then cordoned off the office and the screening resumed, according to media reports.

No further details were immediately available.

The 2019 dramatic thriller titled Gareth Jones was directed by Poland's Agnieszka Holland. It is co-produced by Britain, Poland, and Ukraine. Jones was the first to report in Western media about the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine.

The screening at Memorial’s offices was organized jointly with the Polish Cultural Center in Moscow.

Some 4 million Ukrainians were killed in the famine, known as the Holodomor, that was engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to eliminate a perceived threat to central Soviet power.

RFE/RL has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government.

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